[58] See a passage in Plato’s Charmidês, where Heindorf remarks with propriety upon his equivocal use of the words εὖ ζῇν and εὖ πράττειν — also the Gorgias, p. 507 D, with the notes of Routh and Heindorf. I have noticed both passages in discussing these two dialogues.
[59] Aristotle, De Sophist. Elench.; also Arist. Rhet. ii. p. 1401, a-b.
Mistake of supposing fallacies to have been invented and propagated by Athenian Sophists — they are inherent inadvertencies and liabilities to error, in the ordinary process of thinking. Formal debate affords the best means of correcting them.
The true character of these fallacies is very generally overlooked by the Platonic critics, in their appreciation of the Euthydêmus; when they point our attention to the supposed tricks and frauds of the persons whom they called Sophists, as well as to mischievous corruptions alleged to arise from Eristic or formal contentious debate. These critics speak as if they thought that such fallacies were the special inventions of Athenian Sophists for the purposes of Athenian Eristic: as if such causes of error were inoperative on persons of ordinary honesty or intelligence, who never consulted or heard the Sophists. It has been the practice of writers on logic, from Aristotle down to Whately, to represent logical fallacies as frauds devised and maintained by dishonest practitioners, whose art Whately assimilates to that of jugglers.
This view of the case appears to me incomplete and misleading. It substitutes the rare and accidental in place of the constant and essential. The various sophisms, of which Plato in the Euthydêmus gives the reductio ad absurdum, are not the inventions of Sophists. They are erroneous tendencies of the reasoning process, frequently incident to human thought and speech: specimens of those ever-renewed “inadvertencies of ordinary thinking” (to recur to a phrase cited in my preface), which it is the peculiar mission of philosophy or “reasoned truth” to rectify. Moreover the practice of formal debate, which is usually denounced with so much asperity — if it affords on some occasions opportunity to produce such fallacies, presents not merely equal opportunity, but the only effective means, for exposing and confuting them. Whately in his Logic,[60] like Plato in the Euthydêmus, when bringing these fallacies into open daylight in order that every one may detect them, may enliven the theme by presenting them as the deliberate tricks of a Sophist. Doubtless they are so by accident: yet their essential character is that of infirmities incident to the intellectus sibi permissus: operative at Athens before Athenian Sophists existed, and in other regions also, where these persons never penetrated.
[60] Whately’s Logic, ch. v. sect. 5. Though Whately, like other logicians, keeps the Sophists in the foreground, as the fraudulent enemy who sow tares among that which would otherwise come up as a clean crop of wheat — yet he intimates also incidentally how widespread and frequent such fallacies are, quite apart from dishonest design. He says — “It seems by most persons to be taken for granted, that a Fallacy is to be dreaded merely as a weapon fashioned and wielded by a skilful Sophist: or, if they allow that a man may with honest intentions slide into one, unconsciously, in the heat of argument — still they seem to suppose, that where there is no dispute, there is no cause to dread Fallacy. Whereas there is much danger, even in what may be called solitary reasoning, of sliding unawares into some Fallacy, by which one may be so far deceived as even to act upon the conclusion so obtained. By solitary reasoning, is meant the case in which we are not seeking for arguments to prove a given question, but labouring to elicit from our previous stock of knowledge some useful inference.”
“To speak of all the Fallacies that have ever been enumerated, as too glaring and obvious to need even being mentioned — because the simple instances given in books, and there stated in the plainest and consequently most easily detected form, are such as (in that form) would deceive no one — this, surely, shows either extreme weakness or extreme unfairness.” — Aristotle himself makes the same remark as Whately — That the man who is easily taken in by a Fallacy advanced by another, will be easily misled by the like Fallacy in his own solitary reasoning. Sophist. Elench. 16, 175, a. 10.
Wide-spread prevalence of erroneous belief, misguided by one or other of these fallacies, attested by Sokrates, Plato, Bacon, &c., — complete enumeration of heads of fallacies by Mill.
The wide diffusion and constant prevalence of such infirmities is attested not less by Sokrates in his last speech, wherein he declares real want of knowledge and false persuasion of knowledge, to be universal, the mission of his life being to expose them, though he could not correct them — than by Bacon in his reformatory projects, where he enumerates the various Idola worshipped by the human intellect, and the false tendencies acquired “in primâ digestione mentis“. The psychological analysis of the sentiment of belief with its different sources, given in Mr. Alexander Bain’s work on the Emotions and the Will, shows how this takes place; and exhibits true or sound belief, in so far as it ever is acquired, as an acquisition only attained after expulsion of earlier antecedent error.[61] Of such error, and of the different ways in which apparent evidence is mistaken for real evidence, a comprehensive philosophical exposition is farther given by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in the fifth book of his System of Logic, devoted to the subject of Fallacies. Every variety of erroneous procedure is referable to some one or more of the general heads of Fallacy there enumerated. It is the Fallacies of Ratiocination, of which the two Sophists, in the Platonic Euthydêmus, are made to exhibit specimens: and when we regard such Fallacies, as one branch among several in a complete logical scheme, we shall see at once that they are not inventions of the Athenian Sophists — still less inventions for the purpose of Eristic or formal debate. For every one of these Fallacies is of a nature to ensnare men, and even to ensnare them more easily, in the common, informal, conversation of life — or in their separate thoughts. Besides mistakes on matters of fact, the two main causes which promote the success and encourage the multiplication of Fallacies generally, are first, the emotional bias towards particular conclusions, which disposes persons to accept any apparent evidence, favourable to such conclusion, as if it, were real evidence: next, the careless and elliptical character of common speech, in which some parts of the evidence are merely insinuated, and other parts altogether left out. It is this last circumstance which gives occasion to the very extensive class of Fallacies called by Mr. Mill Fallacies of Confusion: a class so large, that the greater number of Fallacies might plausibly be brought under it.[62]
[61] See the instructive and original chapter on the generation, sources, and growth of Belief, in Mr. Bain’s work, ‘Emotions and Will,’ p. 568 seq. After laying down the fundamental characteristic of Belief, as referable altogether to intended action, either certain to come, or contingent under supposed circumstances, and after enumerating the different Sources of Belief. — 1. Intuitive or Instinctive. 2. Experience. 3. The Influence of the Emotions (sect. x. p. 579) — Mr. Bain says: “Having in our constitution primordial fountains of activity in the spontaneous and voluntary impulses, we follow the first clue that experience gives us, and accept the indication with the whole force of these natural promptings. Being under the strongest impulses to act somehow, an animal accepts any lead that is presented, and if successful, abides by that lead with unshaken confidence. This is that instinct of credulity so commonly attributed to the infant mind. It is not the single instance, or the repetition of two or three, that makes up the strong tone of confidence; it is the mind’s own active determination, finding some definite vent in the gratification of its ends, and abiding by the discovery with the whole energy of the character, until the occurrence of some check, failure, or contradiction. The force of belief, therefore, is not one rising from zero to a full development by slow degrees, according to the length of the experience. We must treat it rather as a strong primitive manifestation, derived from the natural activity of the system, and taking its direction and rectification from experience (p. 583). The anticipation of nature, so strenuously repudiated by Bacon, is the offspring of this characteristic of the mental system. With the active tendency at its maximum, and the exercise of intelligence and acquired knowledge at the minimum, there can issue nothing but a quantity of rash enterprises. The respectable name generalisation, implying the best products of enlightened scientific research, has also a different meaning, expressing one of the most erroneous impulses and crudest determinations of untutored human nature. To extend some familiar and narrow experience, so as to comprehend cases the most distant, is a piece of mere reckless instinct, demanding severe discipline for its correction. I have mentioned the case of our supposing all other minds constituted like our own. The veriest infant has got this length in the career of fallacy. Sound belief, instead of being a pacific and gentle growth, is in reality the battering of a series of strongholds, the conquering of a country in hostile occupation. This is a fact common both to the individual and to the race. Observation is unanimous on the point. It will probably be long ere the last of the delusions attributable to this method of believing first and proving afterwards can be eradicated from humanity.” [3rd ed., p. 505 seq.]